Has the world known a greater horror than what it witnessed on Tuesday when Sarah Palin endorsed Donald Trump for president of the United States? I don’t mean physical horror, like murders, genocide or sexual violence. I mean lingering existential dread, the kind of sick feeling that burns the inside of your stomach like you just drank a pint glass full of battery acid.

We looked directly into the eternal abyss and were left forever changed by it. Pundits much smarter than I have said that Palin’s decision to endorse Trump might shift the upcoming Iowa caucus in his favor because Palin still has many supporters and donors in the state. My God, Iowa. My God …

I watched all 20 minutes of Sarah Palin’s mush-mouthed, meandering speech and analyzed it for you, but first, I’d like to offer up these five quotes. Some of them are from former MTV reality star and burgeoning space angel devil warrior symbologist Tila Tequila and some are from former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. Can you tell the difference? Answers at the end of the piece.

“I only exist in your dreams. Literally. The dream reality exists inside of vibrating atoms at the nucleus.”

“Where they’re fightin’ each other and yellin’ ‘Allah Akbar’ calling jihad on each other’s heads forever and ever.”

“I’d rather beg than depend on the government because then they’ll own your soul.”

“I own this world. You’re now transitioning into MY domain! It shall be fully completed by May.”

“Power through strength. Well, then, we’re talking about our very existence, so no, we’re not going to chill. In fact it’s time to drill, baby, drill down.”

Can I get a ‘Hallelujah!’ Sarah Palin and Donald Trump. Photograph: Mary Altaffer/AP

And so it begins. These two really look great next to each other, don’t they? When in the same room, their spray tans seem almost human. Imagine a hyper-intelligent species from another galaxy coming to Earth and intercepting the satellite feed of this horrendous speech. First of all, they’d have no idea how to decipher our language and second, they’d assume Valencia oranges were our babies.

Instead of leaving the stage for a pee break or sitting down outside of the frame like anyone else would, Trump lingers. He just stands there like the Colossus of Rhodes, breaking character only to give a thumbs up or smile when Palin forms a complete sentence.

“Looking around at all of you, you hardworking Iowa families. You farm families, and teachers, and Teamsters, and cops, and cooks. You rockin’ rollers. And holy rollers! All of you who work so hard. You full-time moms. You with the hands that rock the cradle. You all make the world go round, and now our cause is one.” Goodnight you princes of Maine, you kings of New England!

Hopefully I am not the only one who heard the above quote and thought about Rebecca De Mornay in the 1992 psychological thriller The Hand That Rocks the Cradle – a film about a vindictive, childless nanny who tries to steal another woman’s family through seduction and physical intimidation. See, the federal government is the nanny (state) in this analogy and you are the poor, victimized family who just wants someone to raise their children for them so that they can focus on their careers. But nooooo, this nanny wants to take your kids, and your husband, and your guns, and your taxes, and eventually … your life!

What I’m saying is that The Hand That Rocks the Cradle explains the entire Republican platform and you should watch it immediately.

Palin deftly segues into what convinced her to endorse Trump rather than all the other equally bloodthirsty Republican candidates.

“He is from the private sector, not a politician – can I get a ‘Hallelujah!’ Where, in the private sector, you actually have to balance budgets in order to prioritize, to keep the main thing, the main thing, and he knows the main thing: a president is to keep us safe economically and militarily. He knows the main thing, and he knows how to lead the charge. So troops, hang in there, because help’s on the way because he, better than anyone, isn’t he known for being able to command, fire!”

Oh, I can just see it now. Once “Make America Great Again” becomes passe, the new Trump campaign slogan will be, “Donald Trump: He Knows the Main Thing … and Knows How to Keep It.” Or better yet, “Donald Trump and the Main Thing” will be the name of a high school ska band in Kingston, New York.

As Palin ploughs on, Trump’s teeth finally make an appearance on the campaign trail. As disturbingly white as those teeth may be, it’s preferable to his pursed mouth that looks like he’s about to kiss a live salmon.

“Trump’s candidacy, it has exposed not just that tragic ramifications of that betrayal of the transformation of our country, but too, he has exposed the complicity on both sides of the aisle that has enabled it, OK?”

OK …

At this point, even Trump looks completely baffled. No matter what you think of the man’s hateful, moronic rhetoric, at least it’s coherent. Right now, as I watch this video, I can feel myself going mad. All Palin and No Logic Makes Dave a Dull Boy.

“That’s why they’ve been bloating budgets. It’s for crony capitalists to be able suck off of them.” If you think that sounds obscene, wait until you get to the part about slurping off the gravy train.

Palin fawns over Trump a bit more, then spins a few conspiracy theories about how the Republican establishment wants the Donald to disappear and that the Democrats would never “eat their own”. I accept that the traditional GOP power-brokers don’t want Trump to be their nominee, but to say that Democrats are somehow the model of an efficient political machine that simply bends over for the old school candidate is ludicrous. In fact, in 2008 the Democratic party split in half during their primary, almost annihilating both Hillary Clinton and upstart Barack Obama in the process. If you are not Sarah Palin and actually read the news, you’d remember that there was even talk of a brokered convention that year.

“We, you, a diverse, dynamic, needed support base that they would attack. And now, some of them even whispering, they’re ready to throw in for Hillary over Trump because they can’t afford to see the status quo go, otherwise, they won’t be able to be slurping off the gravy train that’s been feeding them all these years. They don’t want that to end.”

Was this speech written, or was it found at the bottom of the ocean next to the Cloverfield monster?

And now, Palin totally falls apart and starts speaking as though a tiny man with a cattle prod is silently electrocuting her underneath her podium while she tries to finish her remarks. “Well, and then, funny, haha, not funny, but now, what they’re doing is wailing, ‘Well, Trump and his, uh, uh, uh, Trumpeters, they’re not conservative enough.’” Christopher Dorner’s manifesto made more sense than this. I haven’t seen a speech this bad since the first Police Academy movie.

“They didn’t want to talk about these issue until he brought ’em up. In fact, they’ve been wearing a, this, political correctness kind of like a suicide vest.”

Never before has the idea of a suicide vest sounded more appealing. “So, all I have to do is press this button and the bad lady’s voice will go away? Please, God, sign me up.”

“He builds things, he builds big things, things that touch the sky.” I hope the sight of this bothers you as much as it bothers me.

Cool grandma Sarah decides to let it all hang out and toss some hot jive: “You know, they stomp on our neck, and then they tell us, ‘Just chill, OK just relax.’ Well, look, we are mad, and we’ve been had. They need to get used to it.” This is truly the “I Have a Dream” speech for idiots.

“The self-made success of his, you know that he doesn’t get his power, his high, off of OPM, other people’s money, like a lot of dopes in Washington do. They’re addicted to OPM, where they take other people’s money, and then their high is getting to redistribute it, right?” For a brief moment, I thought Palin was accusing the entire federal government of being addicted to smack. Debilitating drug addiction might explain the contents and composition of this speech.

By the way, you know what you call people who derive pleasure from giving the less fortunate among us money? Christians.

Trump looks off stage. Who is he looking at? A stage manager? Is he searching for an exit? Regretting every single one of his life choices and praying for salvation?

“And you’re ready for the tax reform he talks about to open up main street again. And you’re ready to stop the race-baiting and the division based on color and zip code, to unify around the right issues. The issues important to me, or I wouldn’t be endorsing him. Pro-life, pro-second amendment, strict constitutionality. Those things that are unifying values and their time-tested truths involved. These are unifying values from big cities to tiny towns, from big mountain states and the Big Apple, to the big, beautiful heartland that’s in between.”

Aren’t those all the most divisive issues in the country? Those are the issues we’re supposed to unify around? Here are a few issues that actually unify the country:

• Ice Cream Is Delicious

• McDonald’s All Day Breakfast

• Star Wars

• Zayn Should Have Stayed in One Direction. He’s Totally Sabotaged His Own Career.

• Free Beer

If that was Donald Trump’s platform, he’d have my vote for Permanent Emperor of the Universe.

“Now, finally friends, I want you to try to picture this, it’s a nice thing to picture. Exactly one year from tomorrow, former president Barack Obama. He packs up the teleprompters and the selfie-sticks, and the Greek columns, and all that hopey, changey stuff and he heads on back to Chicago, where I’m sure he can find some community there to organize again. There, he can finally look up, President Obama will be able to look up, and there, over his head, he’ll be able to see that shining, towering, Trump tower. Yes, Barack, he built that, and that says a lot. Iowa, you say a lot, being here tonight, supporting the right man who will allow you to make America great again. God bless you! God bless the United States of America and our next president of the United States, Donald J Trump!”

I am truly flabbergasted that Sarah Palin hasn’t come up with new insults to direct at Obama. This guy is a two-term president who has overseen the passage of major legislation like the Affordable Care Act, dined with countless world leaders, and will likely leave office with improvement on most major economic markers since he got the job. All that, and the best she can do is to mock him for working as a community organizer.

It has never worked to mock this man for helping people in need. You’d be better off joking about his gigantic dumbo ears or his mole instead of impugning the very idea of human kindness. Obama is 2-0 against these clowns and yet they persist in claiming that using a teleprompter disqualifies you for the office of president. To Sarah Palin, a truly impressive achievement is paying to erect a building shaped like a hunting rifle.

As if Palin’s speech wasn’t grotesque enough, we have to see Trump’s kissing face. What is he kissing? The invisible demon whispering in Palin’s ear? I have to assume that an outside entity was feeding her lines, as it is the only explanation for her shambolic, disjointed lunacy. Inexplicably, a human being who speaks like the comment thread underneath a YouTube video remains a political force in this country.

Really, this was all fated to happen. No two people on this planet seem less concerned with criticism, more content with themselves, or more oblivious to the obscenity of the words they speak. Let us never forget that almost 60 million Americans voted for John McCain in 2008. That’s 60 million people in a nation of over 300 million that had no qualms about having Sarah Palin a breath away from the nuclear codes. To them, there was nothing wrong with her speech yesterday. It probably made perfect sense. The stumbling, the atrocious grammar, and the folksy gibberish just endears her to them more. Sarah Palin has not disappeared because her supporters haven’t either. The marriage of Trump and Palin is simply the unification of a movement that has been gaining steam in this country ever since the election of George W Bush. This is not a nation of thinkers. It’s a nation of deciders and robber barons and blowhards.

ANSWERS:

“I only exist in your dreams. Literally. The dream reality exists inside of vibrating atoms at the nucleus.” TILA

“Where they’re fightin’ each other and yellin’ “Allah Akbar” calling jihad on each other’s heads for ever and ever.” SARAH

“I’d rather beg than depend on the government because then they’ll own your soul.” TILA

“I own this world. You’re now transitioning into MY domain! It shall be fully completed by May.” TILA

“Power through strength. Well, then, we’re talking about our very existence, so no, we’re not going to chill. In fact it’s time to drill, baby, drill down.” SARAH